by Rod Gragg
And now he waited. If the enemy did not attack, he would take up the offensive and order the army to make an assault. In the afternoon, reports from his signal station atop Big Round Top and elsewhere indicated movement against both of his flanks. It was just a question of time, he believed, until the Confederates came his way. He dispatched an official update to General in Chief Henry W. Halleck in Washington. In it, he lightly passed over the previous day’s near-disastrous defeat—two corps had to “fall back from the town,” he stated—and advised Halleck (and President Lincoln) of his defensive strategy. He also noted that he was awaiting “the attack of the enemy.”
Headquarters Near Gettysburg, Pa.,
July 2, 1863—3 p. m.
Maj. Gen. H. W. Halleck
General-in-Chief:
I have concentrated my army at this place to-day. The Sixth Corps is just coming in, very much worn out, having been marching since 9 p. m., last night.
Back in Washington, President Lincoln waited in the War Department telegraph office for news from the Army of the Potomac. General Meade’s July 2 message from Gettysburg admitted that the army had been forced to “fall back” the day before.
National Archives
The army is fatigued. I have to-day, up to this hour, awaited the attack of the enemy, I having a strong position for defensive. I am not determined, as yet, on attacking him till his position is more developed. He has been moving on both my flanks, apparently, but it is difficult to tell exactly his movements. I have delayed attacking, to allow the Sixth Corps and parts of other corps to reach this place and to rest the men. Expecting a battle, I ordered all my trains to the rear. If not attacked, and I can get any positive information of the position of the enemy which will justify me in so doing, I shall attack. If I find it hazardous to do so, or am satisfied the enemy is endeavoring to move to my rear and interpose between me and Washington, I shall fall back to my supplies at Westminster. I will endeavor to advise you as often as possible. In the engagement yesterday the enemy concentrated more rapidly than we could, and toward evening, owing to the superiority of numbers, compelled the Eleventh and First Corps to fall back from the town to the heights this side, on which I am now posted. I feel fully the responsibility resting upon me, but will endeavor to act with caution.
Geo. G. Meade
Major General2
“The Enemy Is There and I Am Going to Attack Him”
Lee Decides to Take the Offensive at Gettysburg
General Robert E. Lee had also slept little. He too was up long before daylight on the morning of July 2—and he, too, had decided his strategy: he would take the offensive and attack the enemy. The night before, he had established his tent headquarters near a stone and frame house on Gettysburg’s west side. By then, in his typical decisive fashion, he had weighed his options: he could withdraw his army; he could wait for the Federals to attack—or he could attack. With his heavily-laden supply wagons, and with the Federal army pressing his rear, withdrawal would be risky. His army was living off the land, and to wait for a Federal attack meant that rations would be quickly depleted and his army potentially weakened. His men had thoroughly beaten the Army of the Potomac in their last three encounters, and in two of the three contests—the first day at Gettysburg and at Chancellorsville—he had won by taking the offensive. He also had serene confidence in his troops—“There were never such men in an army before,” he had said, and they had grown accustomed to winning. Lee believed the wisest course of action at Gettysburg was to attack—and to do so immediately.
His second-in-command at Gettysburg, Lieutenant General James Longstreet, disagreed. “Old Pete,” as his troops called him, had not been enthusiastic about an invasion of the North. Instead, he had advised taking part of Lee’s army and sending it by train to the war’s Western Theater, where it might help relieve the vitally important Confederate bastion at Vicksburg on the Mississippi, which was under relentless attack by Federal forces under Major General Ulysses S. Grant. His proposal had not been accepted, and after Lee’s first day victory at Gettysburg, Longstreet had pressed hard for Lee to take the defensive, wait for the enemy to attack, and let the Federals expend themselves the way they had been defeated at Fredericksburg. Lee disagreed. “Gentlemen,” he had told Longstreet and others the night before, “we will attack the enemy in the morning as early as practicable.” Now, in a pre-dawn conference with Lee and others on Seminary Ridge, Longstreet argued for a flanking movement that could force the Federals to retreat. Lee again disagreed. “No,” he had declared earlier, “the enemy is there and I am going to attack him there.” Lee believed the wisest course of action was to strike the Federal army and shatter it before it could be fully concentrated. He wanted to attack the left side of the Federal line, turn it, and roll it up. He wanted Longstreet to direct the attack. And he wanted it done quickly.
Lieutenant General James Longstreet enjoyed a close relationship with General Lee, who called him “my old warhorse.” At Gettysburg, however, Longstreet continuously disagreed with Lee’s strategy and tactics, and later claimed that Lee “seemed under a subdued excitement.”
Library of Congress
Longstreet would direct the Confederate assault that day—and it would be launched against the Federal left—but it would not happen quickly. At times, James Longstreet could be a brilliant commander—Lee called him “my old war-horse”—and the two operated closely together. “The relations between [Lee] and Longstreet are quite touching,” the British observer Fremantle noted, “they are almost always together.” Tall, dark-haired, with a thick, chest-length beard, Longstreet was a South Carolinian raised in Georgia, who had achieved academic success as a West Point cadet. He had been wounded and decorated for bravery in the Mexican War, had served on the Western frontier, and had quickly risen to major general in Confederate service. At Second Bull Run, Lee had allowed him to delay an attack in order to concentrate his troops, and Longstreet had delivered a stunning success. “Longstreet is a Capital soldier,” Lee once told Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
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“He Had Made Up His Mind to Attack”
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Despite his abilities, Longstreet was viewed by some as arrogant, and if he felt rebuffed he could be moody and glum—an attitude that may have begun when three of his children died of scarlet fever in 1862. On the second day at Gettysburg, he moved slowly to execute Lee’s orders. The delays were unavoidable, Longstreet’s supporters would claim, caused by a long, circuitous marching route that Longstreet was compelled to take in order to prevent Federal forces from detecting his movements. Critics, however, would accuse him of pouting and moving leisurely because he disagreed with Lee’s plans—thus undermining Lee’s strategy. Longstreet would stir further controversy after the war by writing about Gettysburg in a manner that many Southerners viewed as critical and disrespectful of Lee—and doing so after Lee’s death when rebuttal was impossible. Longstreet’s postwar comments may have been self-serving, but resentment toward him in the South may also have been fueled by his postwar political connections with the Republican Party.
In the five years that Lee would live after the war, he would barely say anything to defend his actions at Gettysburg. Longstreet, however, would later detail his objections to Lee’s strategy in various publications, including in The Annals of the War, published by the Philadelphia Weekly Times.
When I overtook General Lee, at five o’clock that afternoon [of July 1], he said, to my surprise, that he thought of attacking General Meade upon the heights the next day. I suggested that this course seemed to be at variance with the plan of the campaign that had been agreed upon before leaving Fredericksburg. He said: “If the enemy is there to-morrow, we must attack him.” I replied: “If he is there, it will be because he is anxious that we should attack him—a good reason, in my judgment, for not doing so.” I urged that we should move around by our right to the left of Meade, and put our army between him and Washington, threatening h
is left and rear, and thus force him to attack us in such position as we might select. I said that it seemed to me that if, during our council at Fredericksburg, we had described the position in which we desired to get the two armies, we could not have expected to get the enemy in a better position for us than that he then occupied; that he was in strong position and would be awaiting us, which was evidence that he desired that we should attack him. I said, further, that his weak point seemed to be his left; hence, I thought that we should move around to his left, that we might threaten it if we intended to maneuvre [sic], or attack it if we determined upon a battle.
Longstreet, posing with an ornate timepiece in this postwar image, was faulted by critics for taking too much time to deploy his troops at Gettysburg. In his memoirs, he would claim that he urged Lee to employ defensive tactics in the battle.
National Archives
I called his attention to the fact that the country was admirably adapted for a defensive battle, and that we should surely repulse Meade with crushing loss if we would take position so as to force him to attack us, and suggested that, even if we carried the heights in front of us, and drove Meade out, we should be so badly crippled that we could not reap the fruits of victory; and that the heights of Gettysburg were, in themselves, of no more importance to us than the ground we then occupied, and that the mere possession of the ground was not worth a hundred men to us. That Meade’s army, not its position, was our objective.
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“A Delay of Several Hours Occurred”
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General Lee was impressed with the idea that, by attacking the Federals, he could whip them in detail. I reminded him that if the Federals were there in the morning, it would be proof that they had their forces well in hand, and that with Pickett in Chambersburg, and Stuart out of reach, we should be somewhat in detail. He, however, did not seem to abandon the idea of attack on the next day. He seemed under a subdued excitement, which occasionally took possession of him when “the hunt was up,” and threatened his superb equipoise. The sharp battle fought by Hill and Ewell on that day had given him a taste of victory. Upon this point I quote General Fitzhugh Lee, who says, speaking of the attack on the 3d: “He told the father of the writer [his brother] that he was controlled too far by the great confidence he felt in the fighting qualities of his people, who begged simply to be ‘turned loose,’ and by the assurances of most of his higher officers....”
When I left General Lee on the night of the 1st, I believed that he had made up his mind to attack, but was confident that he had not yet determined as to when the attack should be made.... General Lee never, in his life, gave me orders to open an attack at a specific hour. He was perfectly satisfied that, when I had my troops in position, and was ordered to attack, no time was ever lost. On the night of the 1st I left him without any orders at all.
On the morning of the 2d, I went to General Lee’s headquarters at daylight, and renewed my views against making an attack. He seemed resolved, however, and we discussed the probable results. We observed the position of the Federals, and got a general idea of the nature of the ground. About sunrise General Lee sent Colonel Venable, of his staff, to General Ewell’s headquarters, ordering him to make a reconnoissance [sic] of the ground in his front, with a view of making the main attack on his left. A short time afterward he followed Colonel Venable in person. He returned at about nine o’clock, and informed me that it would not do to have Ewell open the attack. He, finally, determined that I should make the main attack on the extreme right. It was fully eleven o’clock when General Lee arrived at this conclusion and ordered the movement. In the meantime, by General Lee’s authority, Law’s Brigade, which had been put upon picket duty, was ordered to rejoin my command, and, upon my suggestion that it would be better to await its arrival, General Lee assented. We waited about forty minutes for these troops, and then moved forward.
A delay of several hours occurred in the march of the troops. The cause of this delay was that we had been ordered by General Lee to proceed cautiously upon the forward movement, so as to avoid being seen by the enemy. General Lee ordered Colonel Johnston, of his engineer corps, to lead and conduct the head of the column. My troops, therefore, moved forward under guidance of a special officer of General Lee, and with instructions to follow his directions. I left General Lee only after the line had stretched out on the march, and rode along with Hood’s Division, which was in the rear. The march was necessarily slow, the conductor frequently encountering points that exposed the troops to the view of the signal station on Round Top.
At length the column halted. After waiting some time, supposing that it would soon move forward, I sent to the front to inquire the occasion of the delay. It was reported that the column was awaiting the movements of Colonel Johnston, who was trying to lead it by some route by which it could pursue its march without falling under view of the Federal signal station. Looking up toward Round Top I saw that the signal station was in full view, and, as we could plainly see this station, it was apparent that our heavy columns was seen from their position, and that further efforts to conceal ourselves would be a waste of time.
I became very impatient at this delay, and determined to take upon myself the responsibility of hurrying the troops forward. I did not order General McLaws forward, because, as the head of the column, he had direct orders from General Lee to follow the conduct of Colonel Johnston. Therefore, I sent orders to Hood, who was in the rear and not encumbered by these instructions, to push his division forward by the most direct route, so as to take position on my right. He did so, and thus broke up the delay. The troops were rapidly thrown into position, and preparations were made for the attack....3
“I Saw That This Was the Key of the Whole Position”
Federal Forces Scramble to Secure Little Round Top
Without reconnaissance from General Stuart’s cavalry, which was still unaccounted for, Lee had limited knowledge of the terrain and of Federal deployments. He did not realize the full extent of the Federal defensive line, believing—incorrectly—that its extreme left flank stopped near a field of wheat that lay east of the Emmitsburg Road. At the time, the line extended to the base of Little Round Top. Lee’s plan of attack called for Longstreet to strike the Federal left flank where Lee believed it ended—at the wheat field—turn the enemy flank and then attack northward, rolling up the Federal battle line back toward Gettysburg. Meanwhile, from the northern end of the Confederate line, troops from General A. P. Hill’s corps would make a secondary attack on Cemetery Ridge so that the Federal army would be smashed between two hammer-like blows.
As the twin attacks began, according to Lee’s instructions, General Ewell would move his corps against Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill from the north, and apply pressure to keep General Meade from shoring up the Federal left flank with troops from his right flank. If given the opportunity, Ewell needed to make a full-force attack on Culp’s Hill and on Cemetery Hill. It was a complicated plan, requiring coordinated timing and the kind of shock-force attack that had been executed for Lee in the past by “Stonewall” Jackson. But Lee did not have Jackson at Gettysburg.
Lee wanted the attack launched en echelon—one brigade after another striking the Federal line, beginning on the Federal left, gathering strength, rolling it up—and he wanted it made before the enemy’s troops were fully in place or reinforced. Longstreet’s corps was still arriving at Gettysburg, so, to make the attack, Lee and Longstreet chose two divisions of troops available to them—one commanded by Major General Lafayette McLaws and the other led by Major General John Bell Hood. For whatever reasons, Longstreet did not get his troops deployed for the attack as quickly as Lee had hoped. Not until late in the afternoon did he have Hood’s and McLaws’s divisions in place and ready to strike.
At four o’clock, with Longstreet’s artillery laying down a cover fire, Hood’s division advanced toward the Round Tops on the Confederate right flank, intending to strike and turn the Federal left flank as pl
anned. The actual route of attack would take McLaws’s division across the Emmitsburg Road, through a peach orchard and a wheat field, and toward the southern end of Cemetery Ridge, while Hood’s division would cross a creek called Plum Run, move through a formidable cropping of huge boulders known locally as Devil’s Den, then ascend or go around Big and Little Round Tops and turn the Federal left flank.
A former U.S. Army engineer and West Point mathematics instructor, Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren was Chief Topographical Engineer for the Army of the Potomac. He had served the army well at Chancellorsville, but his most valuable service came at Gettysburg.
National Archives
As the Confederate attack began to unfold, General Meade held a battlefield conference with his top commanders. The conference abruptly concluded at the sound of the Confederate cannonading, and Meade hurriedly mounted his horse and headed toward the Federal left flank to reconnoiter. With him rode Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, Chief Topographical Engineer for the Army of the Potomac. While checking on the deployment of his troops, particularly an authorized realignment by Major General Daniel Sickles, Meade became concerned that Little Round Top and its commanding summit had not been properly secured. He directed Warren to see to it, and the general ascended the wooded peak with his engineering staff and orderlies. Once there, Warren realized Little Round Top dominated the lower end of the Federal line. He realized it should be made anchor of the Federal line on Cemetery Ridge; its commanding view made it ideal for Federal artillery. If captured by Lee’s army, however, Confederate artillery could ravage the entire Federal line. Frantically, he summoned Federal troops, who deployed on the hill barely in time to secure it.